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As the country confronts its third impeachment procedure in fewer than 50 years, and in the midst of a presidential campaign as acrimonious as any in U.S. history, Americas democracy is undermined by extreme partisanship. In the Trump era and beyond, Americans should change Washingtonby drawing inspiration from the man who lent his name to the federal capital.

In hisfarewell addressin 1796, George Washington called on his people to exercise vigilance for the dangers of parties and the baneful effects of the spirit of party on national unity and the honesty of public debates. It isthe interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain the spirit of party,wrote the first president of the United States.

While Washingtons letter is read in the U.S. Senate each year on his birthday, Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on only one thing: locking the political system so as to alternate power to each other by preventing independent or third-party candidates from winning elections or even participating in the public discourse.

One stratagem of the two parties that best illustrates their objective connivance is the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPB), aprivate organization founded by the Republican and Democratic parties in 1987 with a name suggesting a public and independent entity. The CPB governs presidential and vice-presidential televised debates down to their most minute details, effectively reserving access to dozens of millions of voters to their candidates.

Today, as in 2016, Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump puts Kushner in charge of overseeing border wall construction: report Trump 2020 national spokesperson gives birth to daughter New McCarthy ad praising Trump includes Russian stock footage MORE and Bernie SandersBernie SandersSaagar Enjeti: Bloomberg exposes 'true danger' of 'corporate media' Doctor calls for standardizing mental fitness tests for elected officials Warren: Bloomberg is betting he 'only needs bags and bags of money' to win election MORE, two antisystem independents, are seeking the Republican nomination and the Democratic nomination, respectively, because that is the only path to get elected in the current political and electoral system.

Both men are supported by many among Americans who can no longer abide the established political class. A political elite whose supposed expertise has produced globalization with growing inequalities and outsourced jobs, ultra-economic liberalism with the undoing of safety nets and increasing private money in elections, the war in Iraq and the Great Recession of 2008. A political elite that did not see coming the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the impact of Hurricane Katrina and the so-called Islamic State.

Sick for decades, in a fevered confusion of party interests and the national interest, the American democracy is now in peril. Its revival is crucial, not only to the future of the American people but also to the quality of relations of the United States with other countries.

Any reform must loosen the death grip of power held by the two major parties, at both the local and federal levels.

Ideally, a fundamental reform would include, at minimum, a nonpartisan commission with the mission to end gerrymandering and draw electoral districts, such as has existed inCanadasince 1964; a dose of proportional representation in elections to state legislatures and Congress; and the abolishment of the Electoral College through the establishment of universal direct suffrage in presidential elections.

Realistically, the entrenched party duopoly as well as constitutional amendment rules make fundamental reform unlikely.

Yet, changes are feasible notably, adding a none of the aboveoption on all ballots and requiring a minimum 60 percent turnout, in the absence of which a runoff election would take place. Other options include increasing public financing for independent and third-party candidates and shortening presidential campaigns, as well as eliminating the Commission on Presidential Debates, with TV networks reclaiming their independence from the two major parties and opening presidential and vice-presidential debates to independent and third-party candidates.

In order to cultivate a more representative democracy, each American owes it to her/himself to reject the ambient frenetic cacophony, to mobilize by placing national interests above party interests, and to take counsel and hope from the prime infancy of the republic.

Indeed, the spirit of independence that provided the impetus for the birth of the United States also brought the first Founding Father to run without a party label and be elected the first president as an independent.

In his farewell address, Washington had this premonitory warning for his fellow Americans. Partisanship, he wrote, serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, and foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

French journalist and political commentator Marie-Christine Bonzom worked in Washington for 26 years as a reporter for the Voice of America and as a correspondent for the BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and other foreign media.

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Our political parties are wrecking our democracy here's what we can do about it | TheHill - The Hill

First lady Melania Trump was booed at Baltimore Tuesday while addressing a youth summit organized for raising awareness about the opioid crisis. But the first lady took the incident in stride and defended the protest as a part of democracy.

Reacting to the booing, the first lady told CNN: We live in a democracy and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the fact is we have a serious crisis in our country and I remain committed to educating children on the dangers and deadly consequences of drug abuse.

According to reports, the heckling lasted for about a minute and the audience continued to be boisterous throughout her speech. However, Melania pressed on, undeterred.

Melania was also booed and cheered by the participants when she left the stage after concluding the speech at the auditorium of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In the speech, Melania Trump reached out to the students amidst the chorus and said: I am so proud of you for the bravery it takes to share that you have been strongly affected by the opioid epidemic in some way,

The first lady also sought to showcase her work with Be Best focused on children's well-being, online safety, and opioid abuse.

Noting that promoting awareness on these issues was one of the top priorities, Melania assured. I am with you in this fight and encourage you if you are struggling with addiction right now, reach out for support. It is never too late to ask for help.

It is also no secret that the Trump administration had strained relations with the city of Baltimore. In a controversial July tweet, Trump had stoked a controversy by calling Baltimore a rat and rodent-infested mess, that provoked Democrats. In Trumps words, the place is where no human being would want to live.

Trump donates salary to tackle the opioid crisis

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump donated his third-quarter salary to tackle the opioid epidemic in the country.

According to White House, Trump gave $100,000 to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health looking after the federal public health offices, per CBS news. First Lady Melania Trump speaks with children during a Toys for Tots event at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2018. Photo: Getty Images/ Nicholas Kamm

The Trump administration has made tackling the misuse of opioids a national priority. Estimates suggest that more than 70,000 Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses and the bulk of them were related to opioids. The opioid crisis is also curbing the nations life expectancy and is a national emergency, the Time reported.

The Presidents second-quarter salary was donated to the surgeon generals office.

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Melania Trump Booed At Youth Summit, Says It's 'A Democracy, They're Entitled To Boo' - International Business Times

When delivering the 17thNelson Mandela Lecture, chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng referred to those living in comfort zones as traitors. His scathing statement was done in a nonpartisan manner, castigating those in power and society for the ever-widening gap between the economic classes, which has created a major crisis in our unbalanced society.

Corruption in Mzansi has reached cancerous proportions. In fact, so pervasive is this phenomenon that it can be labelled the Aids of democracy, which is destroying the future of this generation and the next. The corruption epidemic in our country reflects the more general, and now legendary, climate of unethical leadership and bad governance found throughout the political spectrum.

After 26 years of democracy, our rich country remains a land of peasants, and increasingly of landless urbanised populations living on the margins in squalid squatter camps bursting at the seams; political dynamite waiting to explode. Our silent emergency comes in the form of pernicious killers such as poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and widespread unemployment. Current statistics do not capture the full and often intangible extent of massive human suffering and lost opportunities.

When democracy dawned in 1994, many hoped for liberty, prosperity and a new beginning. They have been cruelly disappointed. This situation is unacceptable and untenable. Mzansi is a powder keg. Vision, foresight and courage are urgently required to forestall these cataclysmic events.

Farouk Araie

Johannesburg

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LETTER: Graft is the Aids of democracy - Business Day

We saw an interesting twist to an unambiguous peoples verdict in Maharashtra. The Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance campaigning on an unabashed Hindutva platform obtained a clear mandate, winning 160 of the 288 seats in the state assembly. The BJP won 105 seats of the 152 it contested, a strike rate of over 70%. The Shiv Sena had a strike rate of about 40%, wining 56 of 124 for which it ran. Clearly, it was a win for the worst form of Hindu revanchism, for the Shiv Sena stands for or stood for everything right of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It was an unambiguous victory for combined retrograde ideologies of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Shiv Sena.

The people of Maharashtra had spoken and, under normal circumstances, their wishes should have been respected. But the election results clearly told the Shiv Sena that their time was running out. The BJP, the once-junior partner of the alliance, was now the engine of the Hindutva front in Maharashtra. The Sena could no longer be sure of its place in Maharashtra politics the next time, so it bailed out of the alliance.

The pre-election alliance of the BJP and Shiv Sena won over 42% of the popular vote, while the two Congresses together won only 32.6% of the popular vote. If there was any morality and decency left in our politics, the rightful government in Maharashtra should have been of the two undesirables. But that was not to be. Udhav Thackeray pulled out of the right-wing formation.

Nationalist Congress Party founder Sharad Pawar has never made any bones that he believed in to old adage that politics is the art of the possible. What Otto von Bismarck said was a little more. He actually said: Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable the art of the next best. In Maharashtras case, it clearly was the less worse.

What was possible in Maharashtra went way beyond what was thinkable. The secondary theme of the BJP-led alliances campaign was to arrest the growth of corruption in the state by promising to arrest Sharad Pawars nephew Ajit Pawar and change his way of life in jail. The suddenly marooned BJP found a lifesaver when Ajit Pawar did an Udhav Thackeray on his family party, the National Congress Party. It had nothing to do with policy or political morality. It was a question of his place in the family pecking order. Like Sonny Corleone, Ajit Pawar too had a tendency towards the rash and went alone to meet his fate.

Now we have the likelihood of a Shiv Sena-led government with the two Congresses supporting it from within. The BJP may very well say it is glad to have the Shiv Sena monkey off its back. Narendra Modi once described the Shiv Sena as a hafta collection party. Now the BJP can hope to muscle into the Shiv Sena base in Indias richest state.

But this is not a simple art of the possible power play. This newly scrambled alliance of a renegade Hindutva group with the two Congresses has major implications for Indian politics. Soon after the Supreme Courts somewhat judicially dubious verdict on Ram birthplace in Ayodhya, many in the Congress welcomed the judgment, just as many of its leaders welcomed the scrubbing of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that gave Kashmir its special status. By deciding to remain quiet on it, the so-called liberal or centrist parties in our political firmament made their ideological choice. They all moved rightwards. Now they are allied with the ugly face of that reality. Allied with a party that viscerally hates religious, ethnic and regional minorities. So where does this leave Indian politics? Do we now have two right wing formations?

When the team led by BR Ambedkar wrote the Constitution, they obviously did not contemplate the capricious disregard for norms and disregard for decency and consistency inherent in our leaders. How we look is a no longer a concern. In the Maharashtra drama, we saw all provisions and expectations of the Constitution flouted and trampled on by all the constitutional authorities.

The Maharashtra governor, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh apparatchik, willingly accepted signatures by all the newly elected Nationalist Congress Party MLAs on sheets of paper attached to Ajit Pawars letter of support to the BJPs chosen legislative party leader, Devendra Fadnavis. Commonsense would have told Koshiyari that while some support for Ajit Pawar was possible, all was impossible. Did the governor allowed his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh affiliations that to overpower his sense of morality? Clearly he has shown himself as not fit to hold that position. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took recourse a rarely used provision intended to be deployed during a war or financial emergency to facilitate the daybreak coup leading to Fadnavis being sworn in as chief minister.

What we have witnessed in these past weeks in Maharashtra is a complete collapse of the notion of politics being about vision for a better future and what is best for the people. Instead we saw a sordid drama played out in five-star hotels in Bombay, with money replacing vision and ideas.

The Pawar family schism that so impacted Maharashtra politics is yet another metaphor for the collapse of the party system in the country. From Punjab to Tamil Nadu, we now have a party system that is neither constitutional nor legal. Though the founders of this Republic never used the term political party even once in the Constitution, from day one we were intended to be and are a party-based democracy. When people elect representatives they are in fact choosing parties.

How parties function then becomes critical to our democracy. If parties did not function or are not required to function in a prescribed Constitutional and democratic manner, the leadership inevitably migrates into the hands of an elite, as we have seen in almost all our political parties now. These political parties have come together on the basis of a shared region, religion or caste, with any one of these impulses being the dominating motive for coming together. The only party that claims a pan-Indian appeal has long ceased to be anything but an old feudal order presided over by an aristocracy. None of these parties has a formal membership, a formal requirement for membership, forums for participation and articulating aspirations of their communities, facilities to choose leaders by any formal process other than general and often simulated acclaim.

We have seen the transition of democratic styles in many of the worlds established democracies. The United States saw power passing from a self-nominating convention nomination process to a primary-based system that binds the convention to the choice of individual party members. This kind of a transition did not happen in India. On the other hand, we migrated from a system where parties consisted of equals sharing a common purpose and sometimes goals to one where power passed into the hands of a self-perpetuating political aristocracy. Like the Gandhis, Pawars and Thackerays.

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As the losers of the Maharashtra election take power, is democracy really the winner? - Scroll.in

The challenges to democracy and civic order in Brazil, the worlds fifth most populous country, have increased significantly in the past couple of weeks. As dangers to Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, and his movement grow, so, too, do the threats emanating from them.

Tensions reached a boiling point last week when the former president Luiz Igncio Lula da Silva was released from prison after Brazils supreme court ruled that the constitution bars imprisonment of defendants, such as Lula, before they have exhausted their appeals.

Lula is not only the obvious and most charismatic leader of the leftwing opposition to Bolsonaro but also the greatest prize of Bolsonaros minister of justice and public security, Srgio Moro. It was Moro who found Lula guilty on dubious corruption charges in 2017 and ordered him imprisoned in 2018 at a time when all polls showed that Lula was the clear frontrunner to win the presidential election.

The sight of Lula walking out of prison was a powerful symbolic repudiation to Moro but also a clear threat to Bolsonaros efforts to consolidate the 2018 wave that ushered the far-right movement into power. Lula has strong emotional ties to the countrys poor and is singularly capable of moving them.

Lulas release became a lightning rod for threats of repression. After the ex-president used his first speech to call for protests similar to those taking place in Chile, members of Bolsonaros party formally requested that he be preventatively imprisoned on the grounds that he was attempting to incite violence against the government.

But even before Lulas release, the ways in which Brazilian democracy are imperiled were becoming more acute. In the past, each time the supreme court was set to rule on the possible release of Lula, more extremist members of the Brazilian military posted not-very-veiled threats on their social media accounts warning the court not to do so.

In a country where half the population including all of the supreme courts members remember the brutal military regime that only ended in 1985, such warnings pack a heavy punch.

As the court was set to rule again this time, the same happened, and worse. Along with generals, leading members of the Bolsonaro movement led by its US-based astrologer/philosopher guru Olavo de Carvalho began openly advocating for a return of the dictatorship-era law AI-5 (Institutional Act Number 5).

The mere invocation of that bureaucratic-sounding phrase sends chills down the spine of many Brazilians. AI-5 was an infamous decree issued by the military regime in 1968 that empowered military dictators to close congress, ignore court orders and suspend constitutional rights in the name of order.

That decree is widely credited with laying the groundwork for the Brazilian dictatorships horrific torture of Brazilian dissidents. Bolsonaro and his sons have explicitly praised the regimes most notorious torturers.

In fact, in an interview earlier this month, Eduardo Bolsonaro openly advocated reinstating AI-5. If the left radicalizes to this extent [in Brazil] we will need to respond, and that response could come via a new AI-5, said the presidents son.

After his statement was condemned across the political spectrum and by most mainstream institutions, Eduardo clarified that he was merely speaking hypothetically, and that such a measure would be warranted only if protests, disorder and violence of the kind taking place in Chile came to Brazil.

Small comfort, especially given that his remarks appeared to be a direct threat against leftwing protests.

Previous reporting had already linked the Bolsonaro family to the violent militia that is believed to have been behind the still-unsolved 2018 assassination of my party compatriot and close friend, the city councilwoman Marielle Franco.

But a report earlier this month by the nations largest and most influential media outlet, Globo TV, suggested that the Bolsonaro family may be linked to the assassination itself. Globo reported that hours before Marielles murder, the driver of the car that killed her, an ex-police officer, came to Bolsonaros gated condominium to meet with the ex-police officer who pulled the trigger. The doorman at the gate noted in his records, and then testified to the police, that the ex-police officer gained entrance by saying he was going to Bolsonaros house.

According to the Globo report, someone inside Bolsonaros house authorized Marielles alleged murderer to enter the gated community.

Perhaps as revealing as the Globo report was Bolsonaros reaction. When the report broke, Bolsonaro was in Saudi Arabia meeting with, and showering praise on, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi autocrat accused of ordering the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Reporting has already linked the Bolsonaro family to the violent militia that rules much of Rio de Janeiro by contract murder

In a rambling middle-of-the-night video, Bolsonaro responded to the Globo allegation with an extended rant against his enemies. Last week he announced he was cutting public funds to Globo, and the justice minister Moro announced that a criminal investigation not against Bolsonaro and his family but against the doorman who said that Marielles killers had gained access via Bolsonaros house.

Perhaps the most revealing incident of all was the widely reported physical assault on my husband, the journalist Glenn Greenwald, by the pro-Bolsonaro, far-right journalist Augusto Nunes.

Two months ago, Nunes said on a widely watched radio and YouTube program that a family court judge should investigate whether our two adopted sons are being cared for, on the grounds that I work as a congressman three days a week in the nations capital of Braslia while Glenn has been working for the last five months on a series of devastating exposs about corruption by Moro and the prosecutors who imprisoned Lula.

When Glenn appeared on the network where Nunes works and Nunes was added to the panel at the last minute, Glenn confronted him about his attacks on our family and called him a coward, which led to Nunes physically attacking him.

While Nuness violence was widely condemned in mainstream venues, the key figures of Bolsonaros circle cheered and called for more. Bolsonaros guru, Olavo, tweeted that it was the most beautiful thing Ive ever seen on Brazilian TV. Two of Bolsonaros politician sons, along with members of congress, also applauded it, with some regretting that it was not more violent.

What all of these events reveal is the true goal of Bolsonaro and his movement: they want and crave violence and disorder because, as Eduardo said, it is what they will use to justify a restoration of the repressive measures of the military regime.

Dont forget that Bolsonaro spent the last three decades in congress relegated to the fringes precisely because he openly praised the military dictatorship (in which he served as an army captain) as superior to Brazilian democracy. That view, once taboo, has been dragged into the mainstream by the Bolsonaro familys open revisionism as well as the use of social media to convince millions of Brazilians that the dictatorship was not shameful but noble.

Bolsonaro and his movement know they cannot end Brazilian democracy without pretexts. They need disorder, protests and violence to justify a restoration of dictatorship-era measures, which will no doubt be depicted as necessary to restore order the same rhetorical framework used to justify the military coup in 1964. And they are determined to bring about exactly that to our once-stable country.

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Bolsonaro wants to end democracy in Brazil. Here's one way he could do it - The Guardian